31st IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium

Call for Papers

The past twenty years have seen a flurry of activity in the area of parallel and distributed computing. In recent years, novel parallel and distributed computational models have been proposed in the literature, reflecting advances in new computational devices and environments such as optical interconnects, programmable logic arrays, networks of workstations, radio communications, mobile computing, DNA computing, quantum computing, sensor networks etc. It is very encouraging to note that the advent of these new models has lead to significant advances in the resolution of various difficult problems of practical interest.

The main goal of this workshop is to provide a timely forum for the exchange and dissemination of new ideas, techniques and research in the field of the parallel and distributed computational models. The workshop is meant to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in all aspects of parallel and distributed computing taken in an inclusive, rather than exclusive, sense. We are convinced that the workshop atmosphere will be conducive to open and mutually beneficial exchanges of ideas between the participants.

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors are encouraged to submit an electronic version of original, unpublished manuscripts, not to exceed 10 pages using Manuscript Templates for Conference Proceedings. We also welcome comprehensive survey papers on timely topics. Abstracts must be registered through EasyChair by January 26, 2018. After the abstract registration, the PDF of the paper must be submitted by February 1, 2018. You can update abstract and the PDF anytime before the due dates.

The International Journal of Networking and Computing is a biannual journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles in all areas of networking and computing. It has both print and online versions. All papers are indexed in indexing services including DBLP Computer Science Bibliography, Google Scholar, J-DreamII, and J-GLOBAL.

Keynote talk

Speaker: Yuji Shinano (ZIB)

Title: Massively Parallel Mixed Integer Programs (MIP) Solving: Towards Harnessing over a Million CPU Cores to Solve a Single MIP on Supercomputers

Abstract: Mixed integer programming (MIP) problem is a general form to model combinatorial optimization problems and has many industrial applications. The performance of MIP solvers, software packages to solve MIPs, has improved tremendously in the last two decades and these solvers have been used to solve many real-word problems. However, against the backdrop of modern computer technology, parallelization is of pivotal importance. In this way, ParaSCIP, which uses an academic code SCIP as base MIP solver, and ParaXpress, which uses the commercial MIP solver Xpress, are the most successful parallel MIP solver in terms of solving previously unsolvable instances from the well-known benchmark instance set MIPLIB by using supercomputers. ParaSCIP has solved two instances from MIPLIB2003 and 12 from MIPLIB2010 for the first time to optimality by using up to 80,000 cores of supercomputers and ParaXpress has solved two open instances from MIPLIB2010. ParaSCIP and ParaXpress have been developed by using the Ubiquity Generator (UG) framework, which is a general software package to parallelize any state-of-the-art branch-and-bound based solver. Moreover, UG is being used to parallelize PIPS-SBB, a solver for stochastic MIPs. In this talk, we will introduce and show the ground design of UG framework and UG Synthesizer (UGS), which is a new framework to flexibly realize any combinations of algorithm portfolios and racing to solve MIPs on a distributed computing environment. They can instantiate a massively parallel MIP solver with the potential to harness over a million CPU cores to solve a single MIP on supercomputers.